The Sopranos Vs. The Wire

the idea of preferring mediocrity because it's somehow realer tv is bizarre dude, it's approaching rockist levels of misguided authenticity worship

wait slocki if you're not talking about cinematography what are you talking about?

ALSO WHY ARE YOU CALLING THE WIRE MEDIOCRE I'LL KILL YOU

to prove a point

morbs bait xxxpost

the shows are trying to do two different things, and their visual characteristics reflect that. I think there are duff moments in the Sopranos for time to time, but overall, it is a pretty amazing piece of work. Sopranos might be bit more rewarding on 4th or 5th rewatch than the Wire, but both shows are just too good to really put into an 'either/or' context.

basically it's a good thing that tv has busted out! in the same way that it was a good thing that, some time in the 1910s, people figured out that you didn't have to shoot people feet-to-head; or, in the 1920s, that you could move the camera.

xposts

when people say 'cinematography' they usually mean it like it's an additional extra, rather than the actual texture of the thing we're talking about.

i am genuinely interested to know what you meant, slocki! i am stupid about this stuff.

mise en scene?

oh okay i think it's what enrique said. i agree with Lamp that there was a lot that was artful about the way the wire looked. i guess the differences are down to the formal stuff that got discussed upthread; i agree that the differences aren't about movies v. tv.

(i will say that i grew to kind of hate david simon listening to a season one commentary where he sneers about tv and basically spends a lot of time belaboring how the wire is so very not tv like. both false and made him sound like an insecure dick.)

yeah, enrique is right. lol dickensian aspect, but i would compare the wire formally to the nineteenth century realist novel + to shakespeare.

― horseshoe, Tuesday, December 16, 2008 12:31 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

u know its interesting that u say this since simon actively resists comparing the wire to shakespeare--even going so far as to say that sopranos is hbos shakespearean tragedy--he thinks of the wire as a greek tragedy, and in place of gods u have the institutions that ruin mens lives.

yeah well fuck the things he says about his show he is disingenuous!

all right maybe he's right. i know more about shakespeare than about greek tragedy.

my classics professor agreed with him but classics professors think everything is a greek tragedy

lol indeed.

but i think he is otm.

i don't think the wire OR the sopranos is v. shakespearean but the sops is moreso. but let's not get into 'what makes shakespeare shakespearean?' thing.

yeah i have been trying to think about what i meant by that and i can't really fix on anything. maybe i just meant "stagey."

i always thought of it as the sopranos' characters determined what happened and ultimately their fates while in the wire they had that greek god system of 'no matter what you do you're fucked'.

that won't hold up to the most cursory of glances tho

no i think that is a big part of the sopranos, the character = fate thing.

i always thought of it as the sopranos' characters determined what happened and ultimately their fates while in the wire they had that greek god system of 'no matter what you do you're fucked'.

yah idk nobility in the face of futility was a pretty big thing in the wire

pretty big think in greek tragedy too!

idk jack shit about greek tragedy tbh, but i don't think you can sub 'society' for 'the gods' THAT easily. js.

not society but the institutions. running theme in (what little i know of) greek tragedy is that the mortals are but playthings for the gods to dick around with for whatever reason. humans can't do anything about it, and yes, it is more important about how you act in the face of futility (cue jstor search for marlo wanting his name to echo for eternity lolssertation).

yeah there's something that's bothering me about the analogy. i know simon stays on message in interviews about his fatalism, but what happens on the show is people shaping institutions and being shaped by them. it's not like the institutions are floating above everyone, inscrutably controlling destinies.

some characters seem to fit the greek tragic model* better than others. omar more than jimmy, for example. or both fit them and not. like, bubbles killing sherrod is all tragic reversal, but overall bubbs's storyline bears witness to the fact that the choices he makes matter.

*i don't really know what this model even is lol

xpost

ya, y i said it didn't hold up if you looked too hard. i guess the argument could be that personal choices matter for the person, but at the end of the day nothing anyone does can affect any large scale change because you can't beat the department, city hall, or the game. schools will never get better, leaving the kids stuck in a still desperate situation, even if the occasional namond gets a helping hand out. drug laws can't be changed, and the department is stuck trying to give good PR to the hall rather than encouraging good police work.

otoh, avon/stringer doom was very much due to their characters.

schools will never get better, leaving the kids stuck in a still desperate situation, even if the occasional namond gets a helping hand out. drug laws can't be changed, and the department is stuck trying to give good PR to the hall rather than encouraging good police work.

this is why i think the show's fatalism is a problem tbh. i don't mean this in a pollyannaish way, just that things haven't always been this way, and won't always be either.

i think the fatalism aspects aren't so much about 'och well, this is all it will ever be, don't it suck'. the desperate fatalism, i think, is meant to shock and infuriate us into paying more attention to just what's going on. it also ups the drama within the show.

i guess i feel like the show shows you the unintended inertia of institutions but i don't think it actually says schools will never get better or drug laws can't be changed. (i seriously don't think it gets into the latter at all, does it?) this is maybe a pollyannish read of the show, though.

it's true it's not good at showing you that things won't always be this way. and yeah, it seems like simon's project is to use fatalism as a corrective.

drug laws can't be changed. (i seriously don't think it gets into the latter at all, does it?)

It's a pretty big part of season 3 with hamsterdam. royce genuinely looks into legalizing the zones until the's all 'oh wtf was i thinking' - basically the city hall and the game can't be reformed etc...

lol dunno jack about greek tragedy but am trying to remember what fritz lang says about it in 'le mepris'...

re: hamsterdam, yeah okay. i just feel like there are complex reasons in the show for why change doesn't occur, when it doesn't. some of it seems beyond control and some doesn't. like why carcetti fails as mayor--some of that is about the intractability of politics and some of it is about carcetti himself. like how he can't bring himself to ask the governor for money even though the city desperately needs it.

this is insanity

that is otm, yes

xxpost i do think the greek tragedy element flies out the window a bit once city hall comes in and the upper authorities are fleshed out and humanized, though still unable to do much of anything.

tho the greek gods played out their wars using puny human pawns, so maybe understanding the powers that be doesn't make a difference?

"this is why i think the show's fatalism is a problem tbh. i don't mean this in a pollyannaish way, just that things haven't always been this way, and won't always be either."

Can't agree on the 'fatalism'. By showing the processes of what goes wrong I see an intention to be a part of the changing of things.

that would be quite a vain and historically unfounded intention! im not sure if the show's creators would subscribe to it anyway.

it's not a bad thing for drama to tell us something about 'real social conditions', it's just that that can't be the main pitch.

Well, I definitely get a sense of 'these are the problems, maybe one of you viewers will have a solution or two to them'. That's a reason as to why comparing Sopranos to Wire in the first place doesn't make any sense, really.

otoh the focus on reality is unfortunate, there is a big element of chance to this show as well (beyond anyone's control so it undermines what I'm saying a bit).

ok, after the initial couple episodes, i have to say the sopranos season 3 turns into about as great a television i've ever seen. <3 pine barrens and <3 the singing fish toy thing.

I am so w/s1ocki on the Sopranos love but haven't started in on the Wire yet even so I will be very surprised if these lopsided poll results are even halfway justified, the Sopranos is so so great on so many levels.

Yeah, the margin for the Wire victory is way too fucking large. It's a definitely a much closer battle.

i'm w slocki and i think history will be on his side as well

They're both amazing, but the Sopranos has more going on in terms of rewatching certain episodes. Tons of wink winks and inside jokes.

The Wire is full of "wink winks and inside jokes"!!!

i don't think it's worth debating with "OldHamSweat"

there's a lot of things that I could say right now that I am not gonna say

it's not the winks that make it worth rewatching, it's the writing & acting. once you know how things play out so many scenes are so much more layered, characters' actions and motivations so much deeper. such a rewarding re-screen.

Good Wire game - count the Peckinpah refs.

once you know how things play out so many scenes are so much more layered, characters' actions and motivations so much deeper.

^^^totally co-sign this (which I was kinda ref'ing w/the quote above in a fairly oblique way I guess - that line gets repeated in a number of different scenes by different people at different times and its use and repetition reveals a lot of layers)

part of it is that characters in the Sopranos - esp the major ones - are rarely communicating openly and honestly (is Tony ever honest with anyone about anything, really?) and the dialogue is more often than not a really amazing excercise in misdirection, irony, flattery, manipulation, etc.